Books: Book Notes

OUT ON ANY LIMB—John Myers Myers—Dutton ($2.50).

A new and (except for the cleft-palate title) equally expert historical novel by the author of last year's best-selling The Harp and the Blade Hero Ingram Applegarth, an Elizabethan gentleman-adventurer, is 21, short, not good-looking, full of adolescent illusions about himself, intelligent and endearing. The brisk plot recounts his efforts to restore to beautiful Marian Barking her stolen estates. Author Myers' women are somewhat featureless, his male characters agreeably vital—in particular, one Tom the Crowder, a malefactor with more entertainment value than Ulysses' sirens, and much...